Category Archives: Winter

Good Food in February

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February is a hard month to get through. Even if you have a few nice days, you know that spring is not quite here yet and so there is no sense in doing any yard work. It’s still a little too early to start the seedlings and so all you can do is wait it out. At least the chickens have started laying again and we know spring is around the corner.

So with all this inside time, we’ve been cooking up some really good food!

We’ve had Mexican food night with tacos and burritos filled with seasoned lean natural beef, refried beans, sliced red bell peppers, jalapeños, lettuce, cheese, whole wheat tortillas from a local Mexican food shop, avocado slices and greek yogurt (same great taste as sour cream with more protein and no fat! I highly recommend it!)


Britton enjoying his Mexican food meal

We’ve also made chicken with mushrooms, a veggie mix, cous cous and sliced oranges.


Chicken dinner

I’ve been working as an interpreter with a nutritionist at work and she’s been teaching people the “plate method”. This chicken dinner is a great example of this. Take a small plate (this is a salad plate), fill half with vegetables (the mixed veggies, mushrooms and oranges), one forth with a starch (cous cous) and one forth protein (chicken breast). Tastes great and good nutrition to boot!


Our weekends are our favorite for food because we can lazily sleep in and then make a great breakfast. Britton had been making some fantastic pancakes, and so I thought waffles would be really good continuation of this. We didn’t have a waffle iron, however. So we went down to a thrift store on their 50% off day and picked one up for about $4! Now we’ve been eating waffles every weekend (and sometimes I’ll have one for lunch if we have leftover batter).


Waffle with strawberries, blueberries and our chicken’s egg

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Cold in the Cold

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We’ve been noticing how our energy level rises with the warm weather and drops with the colder weather. If the weather outdoors is a barometer for our energy and health (or is it vice versa?) then when these temperatures took a dive from the high 60s into the  deep negative zone (was it really -30 out?!), so did our health! Britton and I were both out with fever, sneezing, coughing, stuffiness, and gunk for most of this week…and we’re still trying to come out of it. The cold brought us a cold!

We usually don’t get sick, but this stuff laid us out. We took two days off work (Britton still worked from home on one of them, the workaholic). The dry, dry air from the furnace only made it worse, and our little room humidifier pooped out on us. So we were dry and staticky and feeling yucky. But, I would rather have that than no furnace at all, like the animals outside…

Speaking of which, Britton built the chickens their own “furnace” with the heat lamp, a blanket covering and extra straw in their coop inside the greenhouse. And it worked! It never went below 0 in the coop! And during the day when the sun was up, it was in the 50s when everywhere else it hadn’t hit the postive numbers.

Even though we were all stuffed up and stuffed in the house, it was nice spending some time together with Britton, dozing in and out of sleep, taking long hot showers, hanging out in our robes all day, playing with the pets, making chicken and barley soup, watching old movies and daytime TV that we NEVER see. (For those of you who don’t see daytime TV, you are missing out on some of the weirdest shows out there -soap operas; infomercials; old syndicated shows; and lots of commercials urging you to sue people, to go to a vocational school, and, of course, to buy cold medicine!)

So, while it was kind of fun (minus all the tissues, hacking and lack of energy) to stay home together and hang out in this other world we never see, I’m ready to be out and about again. I am ready for spring, summer, and Puerto Rico. I am ready to be done with this COLD and be on the rise.

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Spring Tease

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The weather has been in the 50s all the way to the mid to high 60s which is pretty unusual for Colorado in January. Britton and I are pretty happy about it though. We love summertime and this weather makes us feel like we’re in Puerto Rico -except that they would be freaking out about it being so cold -ha. But we’ve been out walking, cleaning out the chicken coop, we even thought about taking out the bicycles again!

It’s really making us have even more alegría about Puerto Rico and this potential new deal. And the chickens who have taken a two month vacation from laying eggs have started laying again! The sun is staying in the sky just a tad longer in the evenings so when I leave work it’s not complete darkness. Life is good! 🙂

Even the sunsets which are usually pretty grey and dark in the winter have been more vibrant and colorful.


The sunset from our backyard looking out towards the twin peaks

But…and this is a big but…this is just a spring tease. Next Tuesday temperatures are supposed to drop to a high of 15. A HIGH of 15 accompanied by snow, wind and the like. Uggh. But at least we have this weekend; we have Puerto Rico excitement to keep us warm; and we know spring and summer will eventually arrive even if they keep teasing us for the next few months.

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Life Prefers Warmer Temperatures

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I read thru a political forum from time to time.  I find it interesting for a number of reasons and it gives me an opportunity and a reason to try and educate myself on a number of things.  Just recently someone posted an article about prosperty and global temperatures.   The premise is pretty basic.  When it is warm out life grows more readily there is more food and more wine consumed!  When it is cold food is scarce, wars break out and societies collapse. 

The article doesn’t attempt to explain the reasons for the warming and cooling and it really isn’t the point.

I thought it was relevant because we are trying to move from a climate that has extreme swings in temperature thru the seasons to one that is much more steady.  In the summer in Colorado it can get up to 110F degrees and in the winter it can get to -20F.   I’ve started to notice that with those swings I also experience a change.  In the summer things are growing, I have more energy and am generally way more productive.  In the winter things die, I have less energy and it’s more difficult to try and be productive.

I would think that not experiencing the extreme changes in seasons and temp would keep humans (and all life for that matter) just a bit more on the productive and energetic side.  It will be interesting to see what my own experience is like living closer to the equator.

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